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Recordings

'Hamelin's pleasure in this repertoire—challenging to the pianist, delightful to the listener—is manifest in every bar' (BBC Music Magazine)'The wizardry of Grainger's invention is never out of step with Hamelin's fingers—all 20 (or so it seems) of them. Try and keep your lower jaw in pla ...» More

Details

Shepherd’s Hey (BFMS No 4) is a setting of an English morris tune collected by Cecil Sharp and given to Grainger about the same time as Country Gardens. The tune of Shepherd’s Hey (which is akin to the North English air The Keel Row) is widely found throughout England. Grainger dished it up for piano twice, in both ‘concert’ and ‘simplified’ versions. In this tricky and inventive setting, four variants of the tune are used, to which are added authentic contrapuntal lines derived from the melody. The ‘Hey’ of the title refers to the step peculiar to morris dancing and the music is subtitled ‘English Morris Dance Tune’, though with the interesting footnote: ‘N.B. This setting is not suitable to dance Morris Dances to’!

Molly on the Shore (BFMS No 19) is based on two Cork reel tunes taken from The Petrie Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland edited by Stanford and is one of the key pieces around which Grainger’s popularity has revolved. In this setting Grainger strives to imbue the accompanying parts that make up the harmonic texture with a melodic character not too unlike the tune of the underlying reel. The jauntiness, vivacity and love of life are expressed here to great effect and to this Grainger adds a ravishing wind-blown counter-melody of the type at which E J Moeran excelled.

The evergreen and ever-popular Country Gardens (BFMS No 22) can be traced back to an earlier version for two whistlers and a few instruments of 1908. Grainger had been given the tune by Cecil Sharp (who had collected it) with a request to see if he could ‘do anything with it’. Grainger had improvised on the tune at a Liberty Loan piano recital during his time in the US Army as bandsman. It was finally published in 1919 and, as Grainger commented in an NBC interview of 1936, ‘You have been afflicted with it ever since!’ Its instant popularity secured Grainger a never-ending flow of sales royalties but inevitably it overshadowed his other works and the endless requests for Grainger to perform it at recitals led to his total abhorrence of the piece.

Scotch Strathspey and Reel (BFMS No 37) was completed in 1939 and Grainger’s note in the score tells us:

If a room-full of Scotch and Irish fiddlers and pipers and any nationality of English-speaking chanty-singing deep-sea sailors could be spirited together and suddenly miraculously endowed with the gift for polyphonic improvisation enjoyed, for instance, by South Sea Island Polynesians what a strange merry friendly Babel of tune, harmony and rhythm might result! My setting of the strathspey mirrors the imagination of such a contingency, using 6 Scottish and Irish tunes and halves of tunes that go well with each other and a chanty that blends amiably with the lot.

The underlying tune of the strathspey is The Marquis of Huntly and that of the reel The Reel of Tulloch (Thulichan), whilst the chanty will come as no surprise to listeners.

The Merry King (BFMS No 38) began life as a sketch for chorus (1905 or 1906) and was collected by Grainger from the singing of Mr Alfred Hunt, a working man who hailed from Kirdford in West Sussex. A setting for ‘room-music’ was sketched in 1936 and the piano solo followed soon after. Four verses are set in a sumptuous manner which culminate in an impassioned treatment of the melody in canon leading to a magical final cadence.

In Amsterdon in Derbyshire Mary Thomson she did dwell;
In service she long time had lived the truth to you I’ll tell.
Her cheeks were like the roses red, all in the month of May,
Which made the wicked young man thus unto her to say:

“Mary, my charming creature you ’ave me ’eart in snare;
My love is such I have resolved to wed you, I declare!”
Thus by his false deluding tongue Mary was led astray,
And soon to her misfortune her love did her betray.

So now, you thoughtless young girls, a timely warning take.
Likewise ye fair young maidens for this poor damsel’s sake.
And O beware of flattering tongues, for they’ll your ruin prove;
And may you spend your future days in constant joy and love.

My father is the king of the gypsies that is true;
And my mother she has learnt me some camping to do,
With my pack upon my back I hope you wish me well,
For I’m just a-going to London some fortunes for to tell.

As I was a-walking through a fair London street
A handsome young squire I chanced for to meet.
He viewed my brown cheeks and he liked me so well,
He said, “Me little gypsy girl can you me fortune tell?”

“Oh yes”, I replied, “give me hold of your hand
For you have got riches both houses and land,
But all those pretty lassies you must lay aside,
For it is the little gypsy girl that’s going to be your bride.”

Then adieu to the meadows and to the shady grove,
No more with my sisters a-camping will I rove;
The bells they shall ring merrily and sweet the music play,
And will crown the glad tidings of the gypsy’s wedding day.

Oh! once I was a gypsy girl, but now a squire’s bride,
I’ve servants for to wait on me and in me carriage ride,
The bells they shall ring merrily and sweet the music play,
And will crown the glad tidings of the gypsy’s wedding day.